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Thursday, May 10, 2018

Hear the Complete Soundtrack Album to The Deer Hunter (1978), and Find the Solution to a Riddle

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

There are two problems with this album. First, it’s not the soundtrack to the picture; second, it doesn’t even match up with itself.

I’ve been bothered by this conundrum for years.

I would find a Youtube upload that claimed to be of Stanley Myers’ “Cavatina” (the main theme) from the end of the picture, only it wasn’t. It would always be a muzaky piece of crap, in which the flute that dominates one of the two most moving passages is missing.

(The passage with the flute runs from 2:58-3:14 above; the other amazing passage follows immediately thereafter.)

But how could that be? I hadn’t imagined the flute.

Then I found this upload. The album claims to offer the “Cavatina” from the beginning of the picture, and then a “Reprise” from the end, as the credits roll. However, there is no “Reprise.” Rather, there are two different versions of “Cavatina,” the first with the flute, and the second with the muzak.

I’ve owned a DVD of the picture for years, and so I finally did the simplest thing, and popped it in. The version of “Cavatina” that opens the picture only runs about two minutes in length, and thus never comes to the passage with the flute. Meanwhile, the full, moving passage with the flute, which runs 3:52 in length, plays at the end, as the credits run.

Thus, the soundtrack album is an exercise in consumer fraud. Why Capitol would sell this version, is a mystery to me.

1 comment:

Pretty much the same issue with the soundtrack from Alien. The music on the album is different to some of the music in the film. For the acid bleeding scene the producers used the main title from another Jerry Goldsmith score, Freud. The end title theme is completely different from the one in the film. Having said that, Alien is a tremendous score. Also, definitely check out all three Goldsmith Omen scores. Amongst his best.

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